Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies by Matt Mogk Read Free Book Online

14 The robots can’t avoid rotting bodies in the road or navigate cracked curbsides or burned-out porch stairs. They can’t maintain balance while grabbing, pulling, and eating their struggling victims alive. They can’t kneel to feast on the flesh of their fallen prey. What they can do is walk in a straight line on a smooth surface and then turn around and walk back again.
    This isn’t a knock on robotics but, rather, the most striking evidence that the walking dead are more capable and likely smarter than most give them credit for. There is an inexorable connection between the brain and the body, so through theoretical observation of zombie behavior, we know that the zombie brain must be relatively high-functioning. Maybe not high-functioning compared to your average human, but certainly high-functioning compared to Kiyomori.
    Put another way, your undead neighbor may not be likely to take up poetry as a hobby or memorize all the provinces ofCanada. But the very fact that he’s able to recognize a door or a window, claw at it to gain entry, then identify, chase, and capture food across wide swaths of varying terrain is a testament to his impressive undead brainpower.
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION
    Timothy Verstynen, PhD, is a neuroscientist at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition in Pittsburgh, specializing in human brain imaging and neural network modeling. Bradley Voytek, PhD, is a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, studying the role of neural oscillations in communicating brain networks. Together they authored a groundbreaking paper on zombie brain function titled “The Living Dead Brain,” in connection with their development of a complete three-dimensional model of a zombie brain. To say that these guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to the structure and function of the zombie brain is an understatement.

    Voytek and Verstynen pioneered the theory of Consciousness Deficit Hypoactivity Disorder in the undead, defined as the loss of rational, voluntary, and conscious behavior, replaced by delusional, impulsive aggression; stimulus-driven attention; and the inability to coordinate motor and linguistic behaviors. In other words, zombies aren’t the most graceful creatures on the planet, but they sure do want to rip your guts out:
    Together, these symptoms and their neurological roots reveal a striking picture of the zombie brain. Based on the behavioral profile of the standard zombie, we conclude that the zombie brain would have massive atrophy of the “association areas” of the brain: those areas that are responsible
for the higher-order cognitive functions. Given the clear cognitive and memory deficits, we would also expect significant portions of the frontal and parietal lobes, and nearly the entire temporal lobe, to exhibit massive degeneration. 15
    Echoing their work, McGill University researchers offer a clear breakdown of the human brain’s control over motor function, explaining that even basic movements—walking, looking around, grabbing—require complementary actions taken by the brain as a whole. It’s akin to a ship’s crew, whereby the frontal lobe receives information about the individual’s current position from several other parts, then, like the ship’s captain, issues commands. The major difference between humans and zombies is that commands such as
Walk to your car to go to work
or
Open the microwave to heat up a Hot Pocket
are changed to
Eat Mr. Johnson mowing his lawn
and
Eat the paramedic helping Mr. Johnson.
CAN ZOMBIES LEARN?
    A 2010 study at Carnegie Mellon University showed that humans and other animals use real and hypothetical memory to help make basic decisions. When applied to zombie research, this fact suggests that the undead probably have some developmental ability in order to hunt their human prey effectively. In layman’s terms, zombies might learn.
    The study found that rats navigating a maze used not only replays of recent or